For a starters, I would like emphasize that I really like and even much enjoy Nassim Nicolas Taleb's work on the epistemology of probability. With his publications on the subject, "Fooled by Randomness", "Black swan:The Impact of the Highly Improbable", "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder", and "Skin in the Game", the man is clearly, and beyond any doubt, a grandee in the field.

When he talks about religion, however, his views are just a rehash of Christian-Lebanese political tactics.

Nassim is a Greek Orthodox, who occasionally tries to survive in the political-religious conundrum of the Middle East, more specifically, the Levant; when he is not New York, of course.

Christian Lebanese seem to have some kind of long-standing, tacit understanding with the Hezbollah bulwark of Shia Lebanese power. The power sharing is rather systematic too:

The 1943 National Pact, an unwritten agreement that established the political foundations of modern Lebanon, allocated political power on an essentially confessional system based on the 1932 census. Seats in parliament were divided on a 6-to-5 ratio of Christians to Muslims, until 1990 when the ratio changed to half and half. Positions in the government bureaucracy are allocated on a similar basis. The pact also by custom allocated public offices along religious lines, with the top three positions in the ruling "troika" distributed as follows: The President, a Maronite Christian. The Speaker of the Parliament, a Shi'a Muslim. The Prime Minister, a Sunni Muslim.

The compromise obviously includes that there is no need for Christians to disavow their own religion, nor their views on the epistemology of religious law, which they are allowed to openly consider superior. They must acknowledge, however, their alliance with the local Shia power. Nassim seems to be really proficient at this game.

So, he has even adopted the idea that any whiff of literalism amongst Sunni -- and by extension -- that probably all specifically Sunni views are ... questionable. The local Shia power obviously does not much object to Nassim declaring specific Shia views superior to specific Sunni views.

Unlike Shiite Islam and Ottoman Sunnis, Salafis refuse to accept the very notion of minorities: infidels pollute their landscape. As we saw with the minority rule, the intolerant will run over the tolerant; cancer requires being stopped before it becomes metastatic.

As you can see, Nassim Nicolas Taleb is even worse than Donald Trump when he starts dog whistling to his political allies. I have never managed to detect even one old blog post by Nassim in which he seeks to disparage Hezbollah. That would obviously be against his own political interests; which seek to keep alive the Lebanese political compromise. He may not much need the Sunni for that, but he clearly needs the Shia.

Of course, Nassim finds his own Greek-Orthodox beliefs still subtly better:

Neither Islam nor Judaism have a marked separation between holy and profane. And of course Christianity moved away from the solely-spiritual domain to embrace the ceremonial and ritualistic, integrating much of the pagan rites of the Levant and Asia Minor.

I am quite confident that Nassim will undoubtedly also employ tactics to subtly disavow the Maronites (Latin Christians). But then again, he doesn't blog about that either. I guess that it is not a political priority for him.

Wikipedia is much more neutral and balanced about the epistemic conundrum that the Salafi movement are trying to address:

In legal matters, Salafis are divided between those who, in the name of independent legal judgement (ijtihad), reject strict adherence (taqlid) to the four schools of law (madhahib) and others who remain faithful to these. Salafi scholars from Saudi Arabia are generally bound by Hanbali fiqh and advocate following an Imam rather than having individuals try to interpret and understand scripture alone. Other Salafi scholars, however, believe that taqlid is unlawful. From their perspective, Muslims who follow a madhab without searching personally for direct evidence may be led astray. At the far end of the spectrum of belief, some Salafis hold that adhering to taqlid is an act of polytheism.

So, Salafism is indeed not a religion. It is an epistemic question, about ijtihad (independent analysis) versus taqlid (adherence to authority), that is clearly not easy to resolve.

The same epistemic question about how to do morality, actually arises in (Latin) Christianity too. Is a Christian supposed to be rather ecclesiastic, and strictly follow the infallibility of the Papacy, or should he be 100% scriptural, like Martin Luther said that he was?

Furthermore, unlike the disparaging views that Nassim propagates, Salafi and Wahhabi are perfectly capable of subtle and even amoral politics too. Why else would Saudi Arabia gang up with the USA -- and God forbid, even Israel -- against Iran, possibly in exchange for obtaining free rein against Qatar?

In my opinion, the Salafi become understandably radical and intolerant when you incessantly black mouth them. Nassim should know that openly disrespecting your adversaries is ultimately a losing strategy. The occasional outbreak of violence will then become inevitable. Furthermore, I personally consider the epistemic question that the Salafi investigate, to be entirely legitimate.